London identified the couple who poisoned the Skripals

Two newly recognized faces, two names yet to be discovered, a mystery. British police have identified alleged perpetrators of the Novichok nerve gas attack against former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, last March in Salisbury. According to a source close to the investigation, cited by CNN, the two suspects are a couple found leaving Britain with a commercial flight immediately after the poisoning.

Sergei Skripal

The two suspects, CNN reports, were identified by the police who badyzed the images captured by the cameras surveillance in UK airports, cross-referencing data with facial recognition technology. Thus, two "new identities" have been identified, a couple that is not known to the British authorities for the espionage activity. For the moment, the British government is silent, except through Security Minister Ben Wallace, who cautiously dismissed press rumors as "allegations". At least for now, London does not seem ready to return to the spy war last spring.

The spy who wanted a peaceful life

The spying story of the poisoning of the Russian Sergei Skripal, for ten years in favor of the 007 of His Majesty, and of his daughter Yulia, continues with a new chapter. 19659009] Skripal, declared cured after several weeks spent in the hospital, has a long career in the secret service of the Russian army, where he gets the rank of colonel. In 1999, he was transferred to the Russian Foreign Ministry, where he spent four years before becoming a professor at the Diplomatic Defense Military Academy, maintaining a link with the services.

Her privileged position attracts the attention of the British secret services and in 1995 she was recruited by the Mi6. at his arrest in 2004, he provided the identity of dozens of Russian secret agents operating in Europe and information on Russian military units and their readiness for combat, in exchange he would have received $ 100,000. , collected from a bank account in Spain

During the trial, former Colonel Skripal accepts his responsibilities and is sentenced in August 2006 to 13 years in prison.In 2010, he was released in exchange for ten Russian agents arrested in the United States in what is the largest spies exchange since the end of the war Colder, Skripal takes refuge in England where he leads, until last March, a quiet life. Then something put, it seems, in a deodorant bottle of someone takes him one step from death. Someone may have been identified, that something has a very specific name: Novichok

The last offshoot of the family of nerves

In Russian Novichok means "newcomer" and is the name that has was badigned to a group of advanced neurotoxic agents developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s.

The agent is clbadified as a fourth-generation chemical weapon and was developed as part of 39, a Soviet program called Foliant. In its most powerful version, it is five to eight times the nerve agent VX, the one used to kill the brother-in-law of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un at an airport in 1926. [19659012] Novichok exists both liquid and solid. It can also be presented as a very fine powder. It can take effect very quickly, from 30 seconds to two minutes, and can be inhaled or absorbed through the skin. The symptoms are similar to those of other neurotoxic agents: they act by blocking the synapse and causing the collapse of many bodily functions.

Russia insists that Novichok was able to be produced by others, notably because according to Moscow, several researchers The Russians left the country in the 1990s and brought chemical formulas to produce it [19659018] If you have corrections, suggestions or comments write to [email protected]